The unfortunate cancelling of Canyons live set meant that Indian Summer DJs took over the task of warming up the crowd for headliner Flume. They were an unlikely duo: one composed and in control, the other oozing crazed energy, bouncing around wildly in a Quit Your Job shirt. He clearly quit his job for a reason: the hyped up energy he put out completely transferred into the crowd. Dropping an eclectic mix of tracks from a sped-up version of Rack City to Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs Tapes & Money to the B-52s Love Shack, Indian Summer DJs drew more and more people to the dance floor as they took it to the next level. Even those occupying the ping pong table ditched their bats to groove out to their killer mixes. The epitome was Tag Team’s Whoomp (There It Is) laid over The Bad Touch by Bloodhound Gang: brilliant.

Hyped as the hottest producer on the scene right now, Sydney producer Flume, aka Harley Streten, appeared to a huge ovation from the crowd. His huge grin betrayed how stoked he was to be playing to such a densely packed dance floor, and he wasted no time getting into the nitty gritty by dropping his most recently hyped-up remix of Hermitude’s Hyperparadise. The dance floor erupted!

Despite each song carrying a distinct sound and flavour, Flume managed to mesh each track seamlessly into the next, meaning there was an ebbing flow to his growing catalogue of original tracks and remixes. By the third track we were introduced to a new remix of a Chet Faker track that Flume had “just finished”. Probably the most chilled track of the night, with Chet Faker’s soft vocals laying a gorgeous hook over a highly danceable chill wave beat.

Occasionally bordering on experimental electronica, it was only fitting that the air was filled with the smell of marijuana smoke as his songs took the audience on an aural trip to a dimension completely outside of reality. There is nothing normal about the music that Flume produces. His unique sound draws the mind into this bizarrely funky musical dimension, which traverses every spectrum of electronica so effortlessly. Gravel Pit took the mind into the dark underground of electronica, with deep underlying bass lines that vibrate deep in the chest, transcending in and out of a lighter synth-driven instrumental bridge, heightening in an apocalyptic-style break.

A quick glance around the venue was greeted with a sea of bobbing heads; never have I witnessed The Standard so densely packed. At the very height of Flume’s set, I noticed that the ground itself was bouncing as the dance floor moved with everything they had. Arms were in the air, girls were on shoulders, people were jumping around and completely losing their shit! The prime position is right in front of the speakers; if you’re going to go deaf, you want to go out dancing your tits off to Flume.

Flume is an intelligent DJ. He completely understood what mood he wanted to create with each song and constantly heightened the mood with excellent structure and feeling (not like house music does with their terrible repeated and elongated use of build ups). The crowd responded justly. There was a moment when he eased off a song into a really minimal beat, which the crowd vibed to gently, then suddenly dropped an intense bass heavy break out of nowhere and the crowd snapped into the wildest dance moves imaginable. You just want to let your body move uncontrollably to his music.

Highly popular remix Sleepless was introduced as “this is the song you’ve all been waiting for”, and with good reason, delivering smooth tones of piano and throbbing synths laid over a silky vocal loop and a trademark bass line. It was so smooth it felt like being washed over by warm air. With an encore of his remix of New Navy’s track Zimbabwe, Flume proved beyond question why he is the most exciting producer right now. Flume has without a doubt the finest mind for remixing in the business.